Retail stores include grocery stores, shopping malls, electronic stores, and various other brick-and-mortar locations that vend goods to customers who are physically present in the retail store. The term retail store(s) is intended to be broadly construed to include any vendor location whether indoors or outdoors, and to also include sales transactions of any type between the retailer and a human customer.
Many stores track the movement of customers within the stores in order to use tracking data to optimize product presentation and ease customer experience. Typically movements are tracked by optical recognition of customers, and their movements in the stores.
Many stores realize that the brick-and-mortar location sometimes serves as a showroom for the customer who later purchases products from a discount online venue. Such shopping patterns have seriously eroded market share and profitability for many brick-and-mortar retailers.
With the advent of handheld smart phones and other devices such as notepad computers, and context recognition eye-glass technology, there is further opportunity for shoppers within a retail store to order goods online in real time. This means that shoppers can order the showcased goods online from a discount on-line retailer, even while they stand in the location of a brick-and-mortar retailer.
U.S. Patent Publication No. US2010/0085838 A1 to Altman et al. discloses a system for small space positioning. The system includes a moveable transmitter and a receiving unit. The transmitter transmits a modulated continuous wave. The modulated continuous wave includes a carrier signal and a base-band signal. The receiving unit receives signals transmitted by the transmitting device and determines a position of the transmitting device within the approximate range based on analysis of both the carrier signal and the base-band signal received from the transmitting device.
The present invention seeks a technological solution to improve shopper experience in a retail store.